From Filters to Body Positivity: Opposing Social Media Messages and Adolescent Body Image

Today's social media landscape is highly complex with adolescents encountering multiple, and sometimes contradictory, messages simultaneously, leading to a need for a more active perspective on media effects. The current cross-sectional study aims to take a crucial first step in examining how adolescents' exposure to contradictory appearance messages relates to their body dissatisfaction. Additionally, the resonance of such messages among users is tested as a moderator. In March 2020, 278 adolescents (69.4% girls, Mage = 16.20, SD = 1.73) completed an online survey. Results show that idealized and counter-idealized content are, respectively, positively and negatively, related to body dissatisfaction. Body dissatisfaction is lowest when adolescents indicate to be exposed to both idealized and counter-idealized content in a balanced manner but increases when idealized content outweighs counter-idealized content, particularly. Interestingly, social resonance, or the extent to which media messages resonate with the social context (i.e., peer conversations), does not moderate these relations. Overall, these findings provide an understanding of how adolescents' social media consumption patterns can shape their body image, and highlight the need for media effects research to account for the complexities of adolescents' media diet.